In spite of the hopes of my roleplaying group – who made very mean comments about curry; I must learn “evil glare” before our next session – I did not actually receive a goat as part of my Gorgie City Farm poetry competition prize.

I did win sponsorship of one of the pygmy goats, and a picture of him (Toby!), both of which are taped to the side of a bookcase, as well as a £10 book token. I don’t know what I’m going to spend it on yet. But really, half the fun of gift certificates is mentally spending them a dozen times over.

What’s happening right now: the final edits of GB and gearing up for the next book (= pre-writing, outlining, minor research). Thankfully, as it won’t be a historical novel I don’t have to do the same immersion I did for the Third Reich book – no one is going to quibble that the tunic insignia are the wrong color – though obviously everything has to be consistent, and there are plenty of pitfalls with worldbuilding no matter what the context.

The main difficulty is that even after putting the Auschwitz novel aside, I have two very strong possibilities for the next project, and I want to write them both.

Now!

Possibility A has some plotting already completed but I just removed a major character and am not yet sure if I’ve lifted away the book’s spine by doing so. (You know, the way you have to eat certain kinds of fish?) And I need to get Possibility B to the stage where the ‘ooh shiny’ feeling wears off, and see whether there’s actually a plot there, rather than just a conceit.

So come November, I’ll be hard at work on the next book, but don’t ask me yet what it is.

And no, I won’t be doing NaNoWriMo. I have no problems with the concept, but I don’t need a little counter on my website to track my progress….